


A Fateful Night at the Cosmic Lounge

by NeitherEverNorNever



Category: Stellar Firma (Podcast)
Genre: I believe in he/it Trexel and he/they autistic Harry supremacy, Other, alcoholism parental neglect institutional ableism and vomiting detected security alerted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29168832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeitherEverNorNever/pseuds/NeitherEverNorNever
Summary: Harry just wants to have a nice drink at the Cosmic Lounge to take the edge off from a long week in IT. That is, until Trexel Geistman shows up and ruins everything, as usual.
Relationships: Trexel Geistman & Harry
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	A Fateful Night at the Cosmic Lounge

Harry slid into his chair at the Cosmic Lounge, taking a moment to breathe deeply. It had been a hard first week at IT, helping repair faulty computer lines and troubleshooting issues with IMOGEN access. They’d had to deal with more than a few irate consultants, build team members, and even a particularly nasty line manager named Arthur or something. In any case, he was going to sit back, relax with a martini, and enjoy his first Friday night since getting out of school.

Now, Harry definitely wasn’t a heavy drinker, but somehow one martini turned into two martinis, then two martinis and a hard drink, and then they were feeling a little too tipsy to be wandering between the bar and the bathroom anymore. He ended up sitting down at a table in the corner, wondering how his life had come to this.

He had never been this drunk, for instance, since he had been in school. In his second-to-last year, one of the senior’s brothers - was it Bathin? - had invited everyone over to his parent’s place. These people were executives, he knew that for sure, so they had quite a bit of booze shipped to their apartment on the higher levels of the station. With a VIP pass that Harry had borrowed from a friend, he had gone to the party and proceeded to get rip-roaring drunk along with her. Harry didn’t remember much from that party beyond getting a little too handsy with another person of unknown gender and someone breaking a chandelier after singing the hit single “Wrecking Ray” by M’ley the Cyrian. Otherwise, he had no real memory of that night and very little desire to relive it.

That’s when a shout went up from the entrance to the Cosmic Lounge, causing Harry to lazily spin around to look there. He quickly noticed the source of the commotion: a person with wild red hair, a onesie bedazzled with sequins and feathers, and a pair of oversize leather boots was walking into the lounge. They were adamantly talking with someone, a young person who looked to be a few years older than Harry and carrying the clipboard of a line manager. As they entered, a couple of heads at the Lounge’s bar gave the pair a quick glance, shook their heads, and returned to serving drinks.

That’s when the most horrible thing happened: the two began to make their way over to Harry’s booth, as if coming straight for him. He realized a moment too late that his booth was the only one unfilled. A little bit of paranoia hit them, and they thought What have I done to deserve this? Perhaps one of the week’s clients had finally found him and was about to chew him out. Oh no, was it that consultant who had somehow punched a hole through its IMOGEN terminal, causing it to malfunction? If so, well, he’d better-

“Why, how do you do, fellow citizen-employee?” the bedazzled figure said, their voice shrill and yelling despite the relatively quiet nature of the lounge. “Could us two have a seat at this booth?”

“Um, sure.” Harry mumbled, getting out of his seat. Even drunk, they still held onto their routines.

“Ah, no need, darling.” the other person replied in a soothing tone while turning to their companion, “I’m sure we could share the booth, yes?”

“Of course, Amélie.” the shiny one answered. “Who knows what dark temptations the night could unleash should we be caught unawares and without help? Best to have an advocate to share the night with.”

“Emily.”

“Who?”

“Emily, my name is Emily.”

“Did I not say Emily? I’m sure I said Emily.” the person shook their head. “Introductions! My name is Trexel KGK Geistman, pronouns he/it, and this is my line manager friend Amélie, er, Emily Emerson, pronouns she/they.”

“Harry MacArthur, pronouns he/they.” Somehow, they felt they had met this Trexel character before couldn’t remember where. “I’m not-“

Trexel grinned and interrupted. “We were having a fascinating discussion on unorthodox sales methods, because I work in sales now, right Emily?”

“If by ‘unorthodox’ you mean ‘outright threats’ then sure, although I can’t imagine why-“

“Hey, we all say things in the heat of the moment. Well, in the heat of several interconnected moments that are so arbitrarily long that they may as well be one shout-filled tirade, but let’s not get caught up in semantics.”

Emily frowned. Harry was terrible at reading people, but even they could tell that she had been dealing with this character all day. That’s when Harry realizes where he remembered Trexel from.

“Hold on,” they said, “weren’t you at that party last year-“

“Do you really think I have enough memory in my crammed, genius brain to recall something from last year?!” Trexel replied, finally taking a seat next to Emily. “Imagine remembering an event that happened to you. Couldn’t have been me, whatever it was.”

The thing was, though, that Harry did remember that shock of dyed hair swinging from an executive’s chandelier a couple of years ago. At the mention of he/it pronouns, Harry realized that it was also the consultant who had punched a hole through its IMOGEN screen. He sighed.

“Anyway, enough pointless bickering about things I definitely never did, where’s a drink?” Trexel hopped off the seat that it had only just sat in, and made its way over to the bar, leaving Harry alone with Emily.

“Is he always like this?” he asked her, any attempt at being kind about Trexel vanishing instantly.

“I will say that Trexel can be, well, eccentric. For what it’s worth, it had a difficult childhood.”

“Didn’t we all?” Harry responded. In his case, it was more that the way Stellar Firma handled education didn’t work well with them. If he could just learn all the programming language and search functions and electronic schematics by himself, why bother with school? They’d almost been held back a year because of their being “difficult to work with,” but really his teachers hadn’t tried to work with him. It wasn’t until he met another autist in his IT training that he realized it wasn’t his fault he was like this, though not before they felt socially inept.

“I mean, I didn’t.” Emily answered, looking a little concerned and breaking Harry from their reverie. “It was hardly a cake walk, but I wouldn’t say it was difficult. Admittedly, I expect being raised to become a line manager like your parents is easier than becoming…what is it that you do?”

“IT.” Harry replied tonelessly. “I fix computers, make programming for IMOGEN, and help troubleshoot system problems.” He had practiced the spiel all day just in case someone asked.

“Oh, delightful.” Emily somehow didn’t seem to actually think that, however, based on her blank expression. “Come to think of it, I have been having difficulty with my portable IMOGEN terminal…”

Harry sighed. “Can I take a look?”

“Sure.” They gave Harry their terminal and explained their problem. “It’s the request menu. When I try to send a request to IMOGEN to get certain office supplies for my work, it gives me this error code…” Emily then tapped a request into IMOGEN, and the terminal made an angry sound and replies, “Error code 394” in a cooing voice.

“Oh, that’s an easy one. Whatever you’re looking for is currently out of stock.”

“We’re out of staplers?” Emily wondered aloud. “Those seem rather important and common, don’t they?”

Before Harry could respond, their table got jostled as Trexel returned from the bar, already unsteady on his feet. He nearly spilled the pair of cocktails in his hands as he bumps into the booth. He half-slams both of them on the table and slid in next to Emily, some of the sequins on its onesie coming loose and falling onto the tiled floor of the Cosmic Lounge.

“What’cha talking’ about?” it slurred out while leaning a little too close to Emily.

“Nothing crucial. Harry works in IT, they said.”

“Harrumph.” Trexel scowled. “The only important i-t around here is me. Anyways, who wants to do karaoke?” It then got up from its chair and immediately began to go over to the informal “stage” in one corner of the Lounge. 

The Board (hail the Board) had recently decided to relax their rules about the singing of songs in public places, so people had begun to set up a space in the Lounge to permit that kind of thing. There was even talk of one day hosting an “open mic night” at the stage, where interested parties could sing their original compositions, so long as the lyrics were previously Board-approved (hail the Board).

For now, though, Trexel, Harry and Emily all went towards a spot on the stage where a couple of citizen-employees were fiddling with a brand-new music machine. It took Harry literal seconds to realize something was wrong with the machine. One was inputing things into the machine receptively, only to get an “Error code 440” from IMOGEN. They then cursed silently to their partner, who was fiddling with the wiring on the machine’s back.

“Hello, gentlefolk.” Trexel announced as he plopped himself down on a nearby chair across from the machine. “Wherefore are no musical notes and arias flowing their way to mine ear-holes?”

“The machine’s busted, innit?” Harry squatted down next to the one working on the wiring. “I work in IT, maybe I could-“

“If I wanted your help, I would have asked for it.” the person snapped, pulling a wire loose. In response, IMOGEN beeped and replied, “Watch it, buster.”

Harry was spared having to listen to this person because Trexel suddenly stumbled into the centre of the room, microphone in hand, and slurred something into it. Of course, the microphone hadn’t been connected to any kind of speaker system, so it was simply speaking at its regular volume. While he was loud, Trexel wasn’t speaking loudly or coherently enough for Harry and Emily to make out his words. It was, however, loud enough to get the attention of a pair of rather large citizen-employees. These people, likely from Security, got up from their stools and made their way over towards the walking disturbance that was Trexel Geistman.

“I’d love to chat later,” Harry interrupted the person before they could reply, “but I think that Trexel’s about to get in trouble. See you later?” Harry bolted immediately, his cheeks already flushed in second-hand embarrassment. He and Emily ran over to where Trexel was, Emily right behind Harry.

“Citizen-employee,” the first figure asked, “what do you think you’re doing?” Their eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Well Iiiiiiii’m doin’ a little care-i-olka.” Trexel answered, leaning into the mike as though to make himself louder and making the microphone’s cord jiggle a little. “I was looking’ for a partner, if either of you strain’ lads wanna j-join.” It hiccoughed.

Both figures looked at one another as Emily quickly stepped between them and Trexel. “Apologies, friends, but I’m already Trexel’s, um, car-oiki partner. Isn’t that right, Trexel?”

Before it could slur out some reply, one of the figures shot it a stunned look. “What, the Trexel Geistman? Son of Timotheus Geistman, the famous consultant?” The other figure raised an eyebrow but otherwise seemed nonplussed.

“Child, my dad always called me child, not son.” Trexel suddenly dropped the microphone from its hand, letting its grip slip. “I don’t think my dad ever told me his name…”

“Aaaaaand he’s spiralling.” Emily gently put an arm over his shoulder. “I think we should go home, Trexel.”

“My mom never did either…” Trexel half-mumbled as Emily half-led, half-dragged him away from the figures and out the door of the Cosmic Lounge.

Harry would very much like to forget the stammered excuses to the figures (who turned out from Security), the rest of the alcohol he drank that night, the burning acidic taste of the stuff as it came back up the following day. But what they could not forget was that brightly-coloured, boisterous, confidant Trexel and that confused but kind Emily who was taking care of him for some reason. In one of his school classes, Harry’s teacher had showed a clip from an old Earth movie, and while Harry couldn’t remember everything that happened, he remembered the line “It makes no sense…compels me, though.” And while that person had lived and died centuries ago, Harry couldn’t help themself from feeling that Trexel was the same thing for them. What kind of character was Trexel KGK Geistman? And how could they never have to deal with him again?


End file.
